advertisement
Abstract #90186 Published in IGR 21-3
Diffusion Kurtosis Imaging Reveals Optic Tract Damage That Correlates with Clinical Severity in Glaucoma
Sun Z; Parra C; Bang JW; Fieremans E; Wollstein G; Schuman JS; Chan KCAnnual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. Annual International Conference 2020; 2020: 1746-1749
Glaucoma is a neurodegenerative disease of the visual system and is the leading cause of irreversible blindness worldwide. To date, its pathophysiological mechanisms remain unclear. This study evaluated the feasibility of advanced diffusion magnetic resonance imaging techniques for examining the microstructural environment of the visual pathway in glaucoma. While conventional diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) showed lower fractional anisotropy and higher directional diffusivities in the optic tracts of glaucoma patients than healthy controls, diffusion kurtosis imaging (DKI) and the extended white matter tract integrity (WMTI) model indicated lower radial kurtosis, higher axial and radial diffusivities in the extra-axonal space, lower axonal water fraction, and lower tortuosity in the same regions in glaucoma patients. These findings suggest glial involvements apart from compromised axonal integrity in glaucoma. In addition, DKI and WMTI but not DTI parameters significantly correlated with clinical ophthalmic measures via optical coherence tomography and visual field perimetry testing. Taken together, DKI and WMTI provided sensitive and comprehensive imaging biomarkers for quantifying glaucomatous damage in the white matter tract across clinical severity complementary to DTI.
Full article
Classification:
6.30 Other (Part of: 6 Clinical examination methods)
2.16 Chiasma and retrochiasmal central nervous system (Part of: 2 Anatomical structures in glaucoma)
